This is a continuation of my previous two posts: part 1 and part 2 Now, let’s briefly consider the consequences of what it means to set up a child for almost-certain failure in school, how that impacts their successfully following society’s rules at an older age — and how, as a society, we react to…
This post is a continuation of my previous post, Brain plasticity and criminal behavior part 1 Now, let’s consider the child in which “all does NOT go well”. 1) What if the schedules of interaction between the child and his primary caregiver(s) are sparse? 2) What if interactions are more often negative than positive? 3)…
On March 24th, I posted a blog entry in which I made an audacious promise. I promised to review why and how, from a brain plasticity perspective, we Americans are so good at creating criminals, in sharp contrast with most other modern world cultures. I cited the specific comparative example of Japan, where the rates…
In a recent book “Brain and Culture” (MIT Press), Dr. Bruce Wexler, a Yale psychiatrist, considers some of the many implications of brain plasticity research for cultural progressions. One special point of his book is the way that our brains specialize, through our plasticity mechanisms, to create a model of the culture (our world) into…
My wife Diane and I just returned from a working visit to Japan (I was an instructor in a “Spring Symposium” in Kyoto, attended by top Japanese neuroscience doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows). On this trip, we took an extra day to stay overnight in a Buddhist monastery on Mount Koyosan, a sacred site deep…
I was dismayed by the recent 9th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals rejection of a California law requiring that violent video games be labelled, with their purchase being limited to individuals over the age of 18. [You can read the court’s Opinion by going to the 9th Circuit website.] What I most strongly objected to…
The following comments were written by Meghan Lil, who I knew as a darling, sassy little lass, 8 or 9 years old at the time of our first meeting. In my mind’s eye, she’s still a kid. In reality, she’s a beautiful, intelligent young woman. In her words: “When I was in first grade, I…
In the July-August issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Nicolas Carr asks us the interesting question: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The article appeared at an interesting time for me, because I had been invited to deliver a lecture at Google about 2 weeks before its publication, and I had already asked Google employees the same…
We have earlier discussed factors that our research has indicated may have contributed to the increased incidence of Autistic Spectrum Disorders. Whatever factors are contributing to the growing incidence must have three qualities: 1) They must be increasing in human environments. 2) They must be widely distributed on the planet. 3) They must be (collectively)…